[Air-l] flamewars, definitions and frequency

[Janne Bromseth]

This is perhaps not what Robert asked for but maybe more of a follow-up to
Franks comment:

>Robert wrote:
>> Has anyone out there participated in a flame war?(The more recent, the
>> better.) If so, I'd been interested in hearing about it.
>
>I'd be interested to know normal an occurance a flamewar is. Sort of a
>statistical thing: how many people experience being in a flamewar how often.

 Researching interaction norms on nordic discussion lists, my impression is
that the occurance of flame wars is..
 a) dependent on the general acceptance of flaming as an activity on the list
b) dependent on if the list is moderated, and whether the moderator accept
insulting behaviour or not, for how far a flame war can actually develop
before participants are reprimanded or excluded from list.

What I think is that flame wars was a more accepted part of earlier
net-culture, and in any case where and how much it happens on a specific list
is highly conextual, related to the lists purpose, the list administrator as
well as the  participants' cultural background, gender, age, relations to each
other etc. I would guess that flame wars are 200% more likely to take place on
an unmoderated usenet-group, where participants are unrelated in other parts
of their life, international (north-american predominated),with f ex political
subjects, and with young, internet-experienced, college-males than in a
moderated distributionlist, where participants can be likely to meet in other
mediated or un-mediated contexts (like in a small country, a professional
context, or subcultures), with a more heterogenous group of participants
concerning internet-experience, age, nationality and gender.


Some usenet-lists are in themselves dedicated to the "art of flaming" as some
of its participants characterize this acivity, but this then would signalize
that activity of flaming would be considered more as a game and playing with
words rather than an outburst of anger on a topic-oriented list.
In the latter matter (wow..) the bottomline would be if the hegemonic
discussion norms on the list include harassing other list members as an
individual right - or if it on the contrary is considered to be an
argumentation strategy that is unwanted on a group level.

As mentioned this is related to why the people are at the list in the first
place (social purposes like playing/wasting time as contrary to a very
informative purpose for instance), the social interactional purpose
(work-related interaction, social, political, related to private-life - or a
mix) - and an important aspect; what is considered as proper behaviour in
these different communicative genres by the majority of the participants (in
many of my nordic lists f ex, with a social democratic cultural background
valuing equality, face threatening behaviour like flaming is often negatively
valued).

My impression is that the traditional "flame-war" as a "fun" or time-wasting
net-activity is becoming more and more marginalized as the group of net-users
has become more and more diverse; most people don't have the time or interest
to spend hours in front of the screen insulting other people.
 At the same time, to what degree personal harassment is accepted as an
argumentation strategy - and what kinds - varies highly. I think making a
statistical overview of this would be difficult without clearly defining what
kinds of activities the term itself is referring to. Personal insults? Going
on for how long? With the purpose of fun/entertainment? Experienced as
fun/entertainment? With which parts of the group participating in these
"wars"? With a moderator supporting and encouraging them or putting them off
at an early stage?
...which again point towards the need for qualitative analysis to be able to
answer the question... (even though more specified, a more statistical
approach would be a helpful frame to use in the qualitative analyses)
But I guess that's what Robert was after when he asked the question...


Apologies for lenght...

Janne Bromseth
>

Janne C.H. Bromseth
University of Chicago at Illinois
Department of Communication
1007 W Harrison Str
Chicago IL 60607
Phone: 1-312-413-5497 (w)
       1-773-929-0977 (h)